Beauty and the Beast

Unprovoked rant time and, I must say, that people who applaud the screen after a film concludes in the cinema should be banned from watching films forevermore.

This tends to happen at big-budget remakes of musicals (here’s looking at you Mamma Mia and Les Misérables) and leads me nicely into a review of the next film on Disney's relentless march of remakes: everyone's favourite 18th century tale of Stockholm Syndrome: Beauty and the Beast.

A contentious choice for many considering its standing near the top of the classic Disney pantheon, but always an inevitability considering the moolah that's been made from these reboots thus far (especially last years’ very well-received The Jungle Book.)

Unlike that daring and subtly different film, however, Disney have played it safe with Beauty and the Beast, putting it more in line with the disappointingly dull Cinderella of a few years’ ago.

Whilst this means it does hit all the right notes (no pun intended) song and story-wise, it doesn't feel radically different to the beloved animation and, therefore, is hard to place alongside it.

The story is hardwired in from birth so you know the drill (save for a few welcome, but extraneous, additional scenes which push this film’s run time way past the animated original) and, after a tacked-on prologue showing the curse placed upon the Prince (anyone else think the Prince is just a foppish buffoon in this?!) we’re introduced to the new, post-modern Disney Princess: Emma Watson’s Belle.

Watson is the perfect casting in every sense. Reportedly turning down La La Land (and, therefore, Oscars and critical adoration) in favour of starring here she puts everything into her portrayal and is every inch the Disney lead for 2017.

She’s our emotional attachment and drives the film forward and her vocals will surprise many who still write her off as nothing more than Hermione Granger. With any luck, this is the movie which will see her as a defunct leading actress for years to come.

Much waffle has been made over her extracurricular activities and opinions which, frankly, is ridiculous. She’s an extremely talented, highly-intelligent actress and exactly what a generation of young girls and boys should be looking up to.

What is a shame is how the film around her is so stuck in the past yet brazenly, and all-too-obviously, trying to escape it.

By leaning so heavily on the original as if it’s a sacred text Disney’s attempts at being post-modern is all arched eyebrow and 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' rather than being actually revolutionary.

Josh Gad plays Le Fou, greasy alpha-male Gaston’s sidekick, and, as I’m sure you are aware by now, is Disney’s first ‘openly gay’ major character.

The fact that this is such a heavily-discussed talking point is a travesty in itself (it’s 2017 for frick’s sake!) but even more brazen is how Disney have trodden the line of ‘inoffensiveness’ to not actually confirm the fact, just make him as theatrically camp as possible and giving the audience plenty of opportunities to laugh at him for it (here's hoping the rumoured 'coming-out' of Elsa in Frozen 2 will not be as one-note.)

There’s something awfully pantomime-like about the film, from the laughable costume choices (did Disney really need to stick to the period dress code?!) to the well-choreographed but straight-from-the-stage dance routines and the ‘boo-hiss’ villainy of Gaston and his fellow villagers.

Things improve when we’re stuck in the castle with Belle, the Beast and everyone’s favourite anthropomorphic furniture.

Here’s where the film excels with intelligent versions of Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs Potts et al. and a scrumptious voice cast behind them including Ewan McGregor (whose OTT French accent steals the entire film), Sir Ian McKellan and Emma Thompson.

The 'Be Our Guest' sequence hits Doctor Strange-levels of trippy psychedelia and is a just argument to be better than its 1991 forebear.

Dan Stevens’ Beast is pretty good. The CGI is slightly off when he’s moving around (no excuse for this in this day and age) but the design is suitably effective and the character has more depth than before.

However, when the transformation occurs, he looks utterly bizarre and, as aforementioned, he really fails to sell the Prince (again, his outfit in the climactic scene is embarrassing.)

It goes down, then, as a nice adaptation but a disappointing one. It’s big-budget, mostly well-cast and features some great scenes with brilliant covers of the original songs, but is also too pedestrian, old-fashioned and cautious.

Like the biggest production panto’ you’ve ever seen, it’s an enjoyable trip to the cinema which will leave you grinning afterwards, but is ultimately soulless.

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